


The Pain of Truth

by JessaLRynn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Castiel and Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester are Jack Kline's Parents, Conversations, Gen, Jack Kline's Powers, Missing Scene, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 03:17:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17675435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessaLRynn/pseuds/JessaLRynn
Summary: The conversation that should have happened."But every once in awhile… every time some horrible creature we can’t beat comes up… I remember that I am a psychic who can control demons."





	The Pain of Truth

**Author's Note:**

> The conversation with Castiel was important and they did okay with it, but I think there was another conversation, something both long overdue and vitally important. 
> 
> Because if there's one person who truly understands _exactly_ what Jack is going through, it's Sam.

“Hi Jack,” says Sam quietly, and offers the boy a beer, studying his face as he takes a seat across the table from him.

Jack opens the beer, listless and thoughtful, his posture, body language, eyes, everything but his mouth screaming that he had no choice.  Maybe he’s right.  He’s probably right.  But Sam knows the road paved with good intentions, knows it better than anyone, maybe. He once took it to the whole depth it goes, making smooth the way with disaster bricks all glittered with pyrite gold for every single step.

“I have to tell you something,” Sam begins, because this is a confession of sorts, the darkest chapter of his blackened life.  

Jack looks up at him, and Sam hopes he’s imagining the weight edging into Jack’s stubborn innocence.  “Sam, I didn’t…” he starts.

Sam shakes his head, interrupts.  “Just listen, because I have to tell you this, and it is still hard to talk about ten years later, okay?”

Jack drinks, then nods, and his wide-open child’s body language is now wildly telegraphing that he thinks Sam needs a hug.  Still not wrong.

“I can kill demons,” Sam says.  “Any demon.  All demons, doesn’t matter.  I can kill them.” He takes a deep breath, looks down at his hands.  He’s white-knuckling the beer bottle, but he’s not shaking, not yet.  That’s for the end of the story, probably.  He doesn’t know yet.  He hasn’t told this story to anyone who wasn’t there before.  

Jack, of course, is baffled, because of course Sam can kill demons.  In Jack’s experience, everyone can kill demons.  He was never part of a world where a one-trick demon with a hate on for air travel was the most terrifying thing they’d ever encountered.  

“I can make them leave the host, too,” Sam adds before Jack can piece together the words to ask why this mattered.  “No exorcism needed, just obi-wan them back to Hell with the wave of a hand.”

“I don’t understand?” Jack doesn’t need to say that, either.  He always looks like Cas, but never more so than when he’s confused by something, head tilted, eyes squinted, staring the mystery into submission, cat curious and nothing getting in.

“There was a demon once, Abaddon,” Sam says, and he watches her in his mind’s eye, all black fire and brutal rage.  “She almost killed me, nearly killed Dean, tried to take over in Hell.  Killed our grandfather right in front of us.  Was stealing people’s souls to keep in bottles.  She was immune to Ruby’s knife, and we didn’t have any other weapons to stop her.  She was the most powerful demon left free to roam the earth, and we couldn’t do anything about it.”

“What happened?” Jack asks, sitting forward in his seat now, intent, and Sam can see his brain making the calculations as the boy talks.  He’s amazing, so completely empathetic and concerned that old history is coming alive for him from Sam’s memories alone. 

“Dean eventually came up with something to kill her. There were consequences.  But long before that, before we figured anything out, I realized that I could kill her.  Five seconds flat.  Okay, ten, maybe.”  He sighs and drains his beer, and wishes for coffee. He can’t take a break to go get it, he can’t.  “She wouldn’t have been a problem for me.  As far as I know, I can kill any demon that isn’t a fallen angel, even fallen gods.”

Jack still looks puzzled. Politely, of course, because Jack is always polite, and very deeply concerned, of course, because Jack loves Sam, just as Sam has loved Jack from the first moment the child looked at him, sulky and so normal, and complained about why moving a pencil was even important. He doesn’t understand why this mattered, sure, but he cares about it because Sam does.

“I made a mistake today, Jack,” Sam admits. “I didn’t think the monsters could get into the Bunker that easily, so I thought we’d be safe if I left you alone to defend it. I thought you’d be safe. I put you in a situation that pushed you where you shouldn’t have had to go.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Sam,” Jack starts, and he probably believes it. “You didn’t know…”

“I should’ve known,” Sam says, sadly. “I… this story I’m telling you is why I should’ve seen this coming.” He takes a deep breath, prepared to admit his secret shame, knowing it might change him in Jack’s eyes, but knowing he has to risk it anyway.

Jack looks more confused than ever and Sam lets him ask the question so that he can cherish one more moment of Jack like this, Jack who doesn’t know the deep dark truth of who Sam Winchester really is. “So… your ability to kill demons is related to Michael’s monsters being stronger than you thought?”

When he puts it that way… Sam’s not going to make it through this conversation if he doesn’t just go ahead and… “I’m psychic, and I have the power to control demons.” 

Jack nods, though he looks like he understands something now - maybe where Sam got the idea for the pencil. Probably that. Before Jack can ask, though, Sam carries on.

“I got this power from a demon called Azazel - one of the Princes of Hell. He set it up so that a whole bunch of kids would have these powers, but it was me he was looking for, even if he didn’t know it. And what triggers the powers… is the blood of a demon.” He sighs. “Not just any demon, I guess. His own blood to start with.”

The kid’s no fool; he’s already starting to look thoughtful, maybe even suspicious, of Sam’s word choice. “To start with?”

Sam hangs his head. “Yeah,” he admits. “After that, the blood of any demon will do to trigger it.”

“How?”

“I drank it,” Sam admits. “A demon named Ruby helped me get started and pretty soon…” He’s talking to his hands, the clenched white fists that are shaking in his lap. He can’t look at Jack, can’t see the disgust and betrayal in his eyes. “I drank demon blood.” 

He risks a look, sees as much of Jack’s face as he can manage, concern and confusion, before he’s back to staring at his hands. He never ever wanted to tell this to anyone, and he’s got to tell it to a kid who didn’t ask for any of this because Jack’s got to know. He’s got to. 

“The thing about demon blood is, demons don’t bleed. Humans do. I did terrible things, Jack. _Evil_ things. Just to get the blood I needed to destroy demons.”

Jack sounds so small now, when he says, “But you had to…?”

Sam sighs. “Maybe,” he admits. “Maybe not. I mean, I had to, yeah, in order for the Apocalypse to happen, in order to open the Cage that kept Lucifer sealed up in Hell. But I thought I was trying to prevent that.” 

He snorts in self-deprecation, a bitter excuse of a laugh. “I’m the one who let your father out of the Cage in the first place. I was trying to do the right thing, trying to do what I thought was best. I was saving people, I said, being able to exorcise demons with a thought. I was protecting Dean, I told myself, because I thought Dean couldn’t stand up to everything that was happening.”

He’s not making excuses this time, but Jack needs to hear Sam’s excuses because if he doesn’t, this story doesn’t have a point. If there was one thing about his entire life he would erase if he could, this is it. Instead, he’s here with this story, again, after all this time. And if he’s breaking his heart to tell it to someone he loves, then it’s going to be worth it.

“Dean didn’t want me to do what I was doing, and he didn’t even know what it was. Angels who didn’t know better, didn’t know what was really happening, told me to stop. Gabriel - before I even went there, he knew what was coming, and he told me to stop. God himself told me to stop - even though I thought he was just a creepy prophet at the time, still. I had all the warning signs. People who loved me, people who hated me, everyone in creation telling me that it was a terrible idea, but I didn’t believe them.

“I told myself it was worth it, that I was doing a small bad thing so I could do a great thing, convinced myself I was trying to save the world. Ruby told me right before she died that I didn’t even need the blood, but the thing is, my power only worked right when there was demon blood boiling inside me. And what I really wanted was the power.”

Jack makes a noise, shifts in his seat, maybe, or gasps, but it sounds for a second like he wants to interrupt. Sam finally looks up at him, but Jack’s not looking at Sam. He’s looking into the middle distance, eyes somewhere between thoughtful and horrified, and Sam knows there’s another thing he’s got to say.

“Jack, I didn’t want the power I had for power’s sake, not really. I felt… I thought… I’d been manipulated for years, all my life maybe, and I truly believed that having that power was what would keep me and everyone I cared about safe. There was a lot of hubris, this huge idea that I was sacrificing something to keep this power, giving up my innocence to be strong enough to stop the Apocalypse. Not realizing that stopping it wasn’t in the plan at all.”

“What happened?” Jack whispers, like if he raises his voice, the whole terrifying thing will come back and try to take him. He sounds like the child he is, not the man he usually appears to be, young and lost.

“Well, it was a trap,” Sam says earnestly. “If a demon is involved, it usually is. I went to Hell, in the end, to get everyone back into the Cage.” He sighs. “It was a long time ago now. But every once in awhile… every time some horrible creature we can’t beat comes up… I remember that I am a psychic who can control demons. I don’t act on it, I don’t even try to access the part of me that could do that. And I definitely don’t go around opening up veins on demons.” He runs a hand through his hair and remembers the Trials, lets a hundred dead angels cross his mind, thinks about Cain and Remiel and Crowley.

“But sometimes, every once in awhile, I’m tempted.”

He meets Jack’s eyes now, solid and as strong as Sam can manage, determined now that he’s laid this terrible truth on the boy to be there for him as it weighs him down. 

“Why are you…?” Jack frowns, shakes his head, shuffles a little in his seat. “I don’t understand.” He looks lost and small and strangely not disgusted. Thoughtful and disturbed, yes. Still so empathetic; Sam thinks the nephil is more angel than every one to ever hunt him.

“That spell that keeps you alive gives you the power to do everything you did before Lucifer stole your Grace. But the power source isn’t the same. A soul is a powerful but finite thing when it’s using a spell like this. It isn’t going to grow back. The price you pay - every single time you use that power - is going to cost you a part of yourself that you cannot reclaim. There will be consequences.” 

Sam sighs, and pats the hand of the only son he’s ever likely to have, the boy whose death crushed him in ways only Dean’s loss has ever crushed him before. “I fell so far from who I was, who I wanted to be, because I did what I thought was the right thing, because I did the wrong thing, even if it was for the right reason. I’m telling you this - the worst I have ever been - because I want you to make better choices. I want you to be a better man than me.”

Jack’s head shoots up now, Dean’s eyes in Cas’s face, staring at him in defiance. “But you’re one of the best men there is,” he insists, stubbornly.

“Thank you,” Sam says, sincere and relieved, but not just yet. “And you will be, Jack, I promise. As long as you remember that what is important about you is not power you can wield or things you can control. The important thing about you, Jack Kline, is you.”

“Winchester,” Jack says.

Sam stares, thunderstruck. Dean appears then, Castiel in tow, and if either of them heard anything before that, Dean’s expression doesn’t let on a thing. Cas is stoic and concerned as always, taking his seat at the table and Sam wonders vaguely what they ever did without him. 

“Jack Kline _Winchester_ ,” their adopted child explains. “For my fathers.”

Dean just passes out beers and pulls out playing cards and, “That’s gonna go well.” But he’s grinning. They all are.

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd. Let me know if you see anything ridiculous.


End file.
